2.01.2009

Currant Oatmeal Cookies

These were really good cookies and disappeared very quickly at our 'feast of a thousand dumplings' the other night. The original recipe came from Alice Waters' new cookbook "The Art of Simple Food" but I (of course) changed it up because my currants were really my currants from my bushes last year and I had some coconut I wanted to use up. So I made these sweet treats to top off a homage to Chinese New Year dinner that included about 180 hand made dumplings, dry fried green beans and tofu, jook and many other tasty treats. This was my first run in with jook and wow was it good. I'll definitely be trying it for myself and posting the recipe soon but real quick it is basically a rice soup cooked until the rice explodes and then it is a thick full bodied soup. Yum!

OK back to the cookies. An odd combination of chewy and crispy with red currants throughout, they were a real hit. What cookies were left anyway, the first batch stuck to parchment paper but after I chilled the dough and ditched the parchment paper we were in business! So I left them out while I was steaming the dumplings and by the time we wanted cookies they had been snitched to death and one remained. Such is the life a good cook, right?

cream the butter and the sugars togetherin a separate bowl mix the oatmeal, flour, coconut, salt and cinnamonin a small dish mix the baking soda and boiling water then add it to the sugar mixbeat the eggs and vanilla in to the sugar mixturethen stir in the flour mix making sure the dough gets well blendedgently stir in the drained currantsrefrigerate for at least 30 minutes prior to bakingscoop by tbsp on to a ungreased cookie sheetbake in 350 degree oven for 11-14 minutes until crispy brown around the edges, the center will still be softcool on the cookie sheet then gently remove to a cooling rack for further cooling

I don't know how to store these because they disappeared too fast. I would imagine it goes something like this: cool completely and keep in a sealed container and no your mouth does not count. Enjoy!

The finished product pre-party.

------UPDATE-----So Cate had a good question, were my currants fresh or dried? They were in fact fresh/frozen from last summer. To make them work in this recipe I simply dried them in the oven on low until they were semi dried. Some were crispy (not on purpose, I forgot about them) so I did, in fact, pop them in some warm water to plump them a bit. My reasoning behind drying them was this, I thought they would get crushed to a juicy death in cookie dough if they were thrown in fresh. They were actually just right in the cookies, chewy and tangy. So if you have fresh/frozen currants from you garden or dried store bought currants either version will work just fine in this recipe.

Cate-You make a great point. Mine were fresh but the recipe called for dried, then reconstituted currants. I actually dried mine for a bit in the oven then gave them a short soak. This produced a semi dried currant that didn't explode when I mixed it into the cookie dough. Does this make sense? Thanks for the heads up on the confusing part, I'll post a follow up on my blog later when I'm done teaching co-op preschool. Laura

Lets see the filling was maybe 20 minutes total and the wrapping maybe an hour? I had help, I press my non-cooking friends into helping. The deal with this dinner is if you come you have to make an honest attempt at cooking real Asian foods, no store bought cheats and if you don't cook you have to come and help. It's a lot of fun and the steamed dumplings are the centerpiece.